Investigation of the mass transfer coefficient in an industrial electrowinning cell under different operating conditions

Electrowinning is the process of copper deposing from the intracellular electrolyte solution to the cathode. In the present study, using electrodynamic cell simulation of the Miduk Copper Complex, mass transfer coefficient on the entire cathode surface are investigated. The hydrodynamic simulation of these cells in the Miduk Copper Complex is studied using computational fluid dynamics. Ansys-CFX is used for this modeling. The Navier-Stokes equations and the continuum are considered as two-phase liquid and gas, turbulent, incompressible, and steady state, and the equation for the concentration of copper in the electrolyte will be solved by considering its specific boundary condition. The perturbation of the flow will be modeled using k-ω relations. The cathode mass transfer coefficient of the industrial copper cell was evaluated by measuring the copper mass of the cathode sheets produced in each cell and the operating conditions of the cell under real conditions. The results show 1.9% difference between the actual amount in copper and the modeling value. With this modeling, the mass transfer coefficient were obtained for different electrode intervals. Comparing the modeling results with the laboratory results for turbulent and undeveloped fluid flow in the cell with a deviation of only 0.5% has also been validated for this case. After validation on the model, this model has been used to determine the mass transfer coefficient for different applications such as electrolyte mixing mode with different oxygen mass fraction at the inlet, effect of inlet electrolyte temperature change, effect of different inlet flowrate.